Resilience | ✔

Chapter Twenty-Four

According to Jackson's phone, Marley was in Mansfield, Pennsylvania and it was a four hour drive to Jackson's apartment. It was 3:56 a.m. The car had a full tank of gas.

She was in the parking lot of the Mansfield Walmart, taking stock of her situation. She couldn't really remember getting here, which was probably not good. Her ribs finally didn't hurt as much, which to be honest was probably not a good sign either. Her wrist and thumb were swollen and stiff. She was exhausted, her throat was dry, and if she didn't eat something in the next ten minutes she'd go apeshit.

Which was why she was at this Walmart.

And it was a very good thing Jackson had left his wallet in the same cupholder he had his phone.

First things first. She took a quarter out of his wallet and got out of the car, leaving the door open. She unscrewed the license plate and exchanged it with the one off the pickup truck she'd parked next to. Then she put the pickup's on a sedan fifty feet away, and the sedan's on an idling Jeep next to a cart return. She put the Jeep's license plate on Jackson's car and grabbed his wallet and the keys.

Walking—limping, really—into the Walmart was like entering an alternate plane of reality. The store was dead quiet save some buzzing lights and tinny 2000s pop on the sound system. Two clerks were talking at the cash registers, and there was a very creepy man in the children's clothing section. Beyond that, the store looked deserted.

Marley grabbed a cart, and her conquest of the Mansfield Walmart began.

For food: a case of water. A cooler. Three cucumbers, six oranges, a bag of baby carrots, two green peppers, a bottle of milk, a six-pack of hardboiled eggs, a container of cheese cubes and salami, a four-pack of bottled iced Starbucks coffee.

For herself: A washcloth. Several shirts and pairs of jeans. New combat boots. A pack of (unopened) underwear. A new bra. Fuzzy socks. A sweatshirt. A first-aid kit. An Ace bandage for her thumb. A backpack for everything else.

The skeevy guy was nowhere to be found when she got to the checkout area. She hoped he wasn't leering around outside. She was not in the mood to beat the shit out of some creepo.

"Jesus," said one of the clerks as she started unloading her cart onto his conveyor belt. "What the hell? Are you okay?"

She glanced down at herself. Hm. She hadn't thought this through. "Makeup," she said. "Does it look realistic?"

"Yeah," the clerk said. His nametag read Jonah.

"Thanks." She smiled, which hurt.

The other clerk, whose nametag read Dina, said, "Have we met? You look familiar."

Marley glanced at the TV mounted on the wall behind Dina, which had a photo of her from the roadtrip in the corner of the screen and a news anchor in the rest. "Nope. I'm not from around here."

"Are you sure?" Dina pressed.

Knives. She had forgotten knives for the veggies. "One hundred percent." She loaded the last of the produce onto the belt. The TV was now playing a video of her, also from the roadtrip, singing along to a song as she illegally drove in North Dakota. She looked happy and free. She'd never seen the video before. Never seen herself look so happy.

"Can I go grab one more thing?" she said.

"Yeah, there's no line," Jonah said, giving Dina a what the hell kind of look.

She went to the kitchen section and grabbed a pack of knives and a cutting board. When she got back to the register Jonah was finishing up. Dina was gone.